Saturday, September 12, 2009

MCMC's Latest Episode Could Cause More Embarassment For Malaysia

Even after the interviews / and questioning of the Malaysiakini staff, the Multimedia Commission still repeats with its probes and jumps into the Jaring office in Technology Park, trying to salvage pieces of information from the servers there.

Even if they can still get their hands on the two videos, there is no way that they can stop the videos being copied and shared around. Today's web browsers like Firefox contain companion widgets and components that allows saving the videos by other users. That means, if the source happens to be accidentally deleted perhaps due to a virus attack or something else, the video will appear elsewhere.

It will still be a lose situation for the MCMC. Say if someone happens to give the video to international broadcast companies like CNN, BBC, Al jazeera, it will be the same thing that happened to Malaysia on the Kartika caning incident. MCMC and the ministry has been whacked left and right by not only the cyber community throughout the world, but MCA and the international journlism community as well.

The real fault actually lies on two main fronts:

1. Hisham Hussein has made a bad mistake of saying that statement that was captured the video. That has proven that UMNO who was the chief instigation behind the temple protests last month has showed its real stripes of being the wolf in the sheep's clothing. Or two-face as you can call it. He should watch his word though on that day.

2. The mainstream media alone plays part of the problem. The naked truth was not told in hold to the people and the target audience. When covering that episode, it is either that it was spin to tell the different meaning or a critical piece of information was deliberately withheld for the fear of being called by the Home Ministry / 4th Floor Boys (notably during AAB's days).

MCMC cannot shutdown Youtube because doing so violates the MSC charter and Najib's promise last month that Malaysia will not censor Internet. It's a Catch 22 situation here. Even if they insist of pressing charges on Malaysiakini, what they will do will draw flak from everyone. I mean, everyone will whack left and right. The problem is it is now a problem in Malaysia for big muscle to shoot the messenger and this means that big muscles are behaving like in the feudal period.

"Malaysiakini is an online news media. This is a common duty for them to provide such a report. The deputy minister should just stick to the law and not trying to pull the public into the investigation to support the agency's action against Malaysiakini."

The remarks by the deputy minister Joe Salang Gandum is somewhat as a misinterpretation and built on the assumption that every one will support the actions by the MCMC. In fact Salang is wrong. Totally wrong. It is the other way wrong. The presumption that every people is against a protest is wrong and the truth is if their cries and requests fall to death ears, they need to do something drastic to prove their point to the country leaders.

Since Malaysiakini has insisted that they have done nothing wrong but doing their duty of journalism, they will have a big fight on their hands, which is to proof strongly that they have no intention to annoy people. But I see from the video, it has proven how fallible the Barisan Nasional leaders are right now, particularly on those little Napoleons. These little Napoleons represent the bad apples of the BN that makes everyone angry at them.